


Moon Beyond Blue Tide

by FireEye



Category: Fantasia (1940)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 23:20:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13064286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/pseuds/FireEye
Summary: What lies beyond the Sea?





	Moon Beyond Blue Tide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosencrantz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosencrantz/gifts).



There was a saying.  A centaur could no more perceive the future than they could find what lay beyond the Sea.  As the day was, the moment was, and as the centaurs were.

He had quoted it once, when they were reclined under the shade of a tree in verdant bloom beneath the summer sun, and her mind wandered, as the minds of centaurs often did.

“What’s beyond the Sea?”

He had roused to the question only to scratch his side.  “I don’t know.”

“Has anyone ever gone there?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated, draping his arm over her shoulders.  In a moment of insight, she thought he didn’t understand the question.  But he was comfort where she leaned against him, and the day was warm around them like a shawl.

***

No one she asked had known.

“The old one might know,” her friend had told her.  Dappled in the shade as she took her leave, her friend seemed to blend in with the grass.

 

The old one knelt on the hill above the caves, watching the pastures below.  No one knew how old he was, not even he, only that his long mane of hair and his beard were touched with silver, and that he knew many things.

“Do you know,” she asked him, when he stood to greet her, “what lies beyond the Sea?”

The question was answered with a snort.

“No centaur knows what lies beyond the Sea,” he answered, “any more than they can perceive the future.”

“Why not?”

“Because that is the way of things.”

He stared down at her as she lingered, gathering the courage to ask.

“Who would know?”

His tail flicked.  She blushed for asking such a silly question, shying nervously to one side.

“It is the realm of the Gods,” he said at last, kneeling again in the grass and stretching his long legs out beside him.  “To know, ask the Gods.”

***

She stood before the Altar of Apollo.

The ritual was old, before her time.  Before anyone’s time.  The old one knew them, for all that they had never been used in his lifetime.  He gave her the words to stop the sun in the morning sky, and the offerings to appease the anger of the Gods for such a brazen act.

She placed the offering upon the stone, and as the first hint of sunlight crept over the horizon, said the words, and when she had finished, Apollo stood before her within the rays of the Sun, blinding in his glory.

She bowed her head, in reverence and to hide her eyes from the light that stained her cheeks in tears.  When He spoke, without so much as a hint of anger she had so feared, Apollo’s voice was honey.

“Why have you stopped the Sun’s chariot in the sky?” He asked.

“I wanted to know...” she stammered.  For a moment, she fell silent and wavered, and felt like she would bolt.  Closing her eyes, she lifted her head, and asked, “What lies beyond the Sea?”

Apollo was silent, and she feared He would not answer.

Then, “Why do you ask me of this?”

She stilled.  And sighed.

“The God of the Sun rides the chariot over the Sea.  Surely he must know what lies beyond it.”

“Why,” the God asked, “do you wish to know?”

She blinked at Him, peering at Him through the morning sunlight, and her tears streamed fresh.

“I don’t know.”

She looked away.

Apollo sighed, and she felt his hands come to rest on her face, warm and kind.

“Go back to your fields of plenty.  Go back to the love that dwells there.  Rejoice in the life that you have been given.”

He smiled at her, dissolving into sunlight.

***

She stood before the Altar of Artemis.

The offering was similar, but not the same.  The words were similar, but not the same.

The Huntress appeared, shrouded in the midnight of the new Moon.  She stood silent, eyes glinting starlight.

Her tail lashed.  Everything in her wanted to bolt, but fear rooted her to the marble floor of the shrine.  In the silence, the Goddess bid her, “Speak.”

“I only wanted to know,” she whimpered, “what lies beyond the Sea?”

“Why,” Artemis asked, “do you ask such a thing?”

“Because I want to know.”

The Huntress stared at her.  Then smiled a thin, crescent smile.

***

The floor of the floating wooden cask wobbled under her weight when she pressed one foot down on it, and suddenly she wasn’t sure this was such a good idea.  Two feet in the cask, two on dry land, and she was feeling decidedly torn.

But the river met the Sea, and no centaur knew what was beyond the Sea.

The cask – _no_.  Boat.  The Goddess had called it a boat – was her way of finding out.

“Wait!”

She paused, and shoved herself back onto dry land.  She hadn’t much thought of him on her search for an answer, or what he would do without her if she left.  She didn’t think of that he would seek to find her before she left, but he did.

He galloped to the water’s edge, breathing hard until he recovered his breath, and held her arms gently.

“I want to come with you.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, uncertain.  “It might be dangerous.”

“A centaur can no more perceive the future...” he started, and she snorted.

“I’m going to find what lays beyond the Sea.”

“I know,” he said simply.  “I want to come with you.”

She stared at him.  Then blushed.  Then smiled.  Flank to flank, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

He held her hands, helping her balance as she stepped into the boat, and, with a little shimmy of his hind legs, leapt into it after her.  The boat teetered under them but held them upon the water.  There was a flutter of pegasi through the skies above as the fields of their childhood drifted further upstream behind them.

The moon was rising opposite the setting sun, over the Sea.

**Author's Note:**

> Man, I haven't watched Fantasia in its entirety in a long time. Which is a shame, because it's a wonderful experience.


End file.
